The Order of the Stick

Yeah, you’re not directly related to either your step-child or your half-sibling’s half-sibling on the non-shared side.

So these last couple of strips have caused quite a stir on the Giant's Forum so it makes me want to ask what you all think of the writing so far? Like, the messages the story is trying to get across and if they make sense with what we've seen, and how the characters talk about things.

A stir? Do people think they're too heavy handed? I think they're fine.

Some people think it's too preachy, other people think the problems haven't actually been portrayed in the story, other people just seem to have an issue with a story saying things like institutional/systemic problems actually exist.

Not all criticisms are worth discussing, but I think at least a few of them are.

Edited by LSBK on May 1st 2021 at 6:11:55 AM

All this conversation is making me think of is how Familicide would be a hell of a way to find out that you're adopted.

I think the comic has a brilliant moral message that has been at greater and greater risk of running into Seinfeld Is Unfunny as the years go on.

The comic start in 2003 and is drawing from the author’s experiences with D&D that predate the comic being written at all. How D&D is run has changed over the years and the people behind D&D have slowly been learning the moral lesson that Rich is trying to teach.

I think there’s a decent chance that we will see a 6th edition published before the comic concludes, and that 6th edition might actually take forward some of the changes Rich has been pushing for years (like the removal of alignments from monster manual entries).

Also I suspect that a chunk of criticism is coming from people seeing “Roy never even though to talk with any goblins they fought” be mentioned as a problem and interpreting it as “Roy didn’t surrender and have a drawn out discussion with the goblins” being portrayed as a problem.

Edited by Silasw on May 1st 2021 at 12:17:30 PM

Same with Goblins.

We live in a time where you hear "this creature is predominantly good/evil/etc, but who cares?" all the time players and DMs alike.

Durkon feels a little different to me but I've been chalking that up to a bit of character development (he outright said he's trying to be more flexible, for one thing), it certainly isn't anything jarring or off.

As for the themes, I think a better* job could have been done portraying the plight of the goblins as currently discussed. We've seen a fair amount of a plight of goblins, but it's not exactly the same thing. We haven't really seen goblins suffering due to being forced onto marginal lands and being denied equitable resources. No, instead we've seen goblins suffering due to being used as pawns if not playthings by Xykon, and suffering due to being pitched in opposition to adventurers through circumstance.

(*Better for making the current point. Not necessarily better for the story overall; personally I like the emphasis as shown.)

But the circumstance forcing those conflicts isn't, at least not directly, any resource disparity. We haven't seen goblins forced into raiding to survive because war is more productive than "dirt farming". Instead, the thing causing all the violence is The Plan; that's why goblins are working for Xykon and fighting the Order of the Stick, that's why Paladins attacked communities of goblinoids, whether or not said communities were actually furthering The Plan.

The conflict depicted in the struggle is very much so motivated by individuals and hierarchies, and their intentional actions. The overall system which people (and gods) are more just unthinkingly complicit in is flawed, it's what the violence is in response to originally, but by now the violence is perpetuating itself due to individual ideology and authority more than practical necessity or survival. And that's not a bad thing! I don't think the comic is trying to make the underlying system and complicity the single overriding issue. But I think that might be the disconnect that has some people looking at this just now and thinking it's telling issues the comic itself didn't really show. But they're lurking under the surface and important to address even if first the ongoing violence needs to be addressed. And that's going to be addressed first, because Redcloak essentially is that problem at the moment, and he needs to be stopped before he can be talked to. He's made that much clear. (And if they do manage to successfully start negotiating with him on a second try, that's still stopping him, itself.)

It's also a big part of why I don't really feel like the plight of the goblins is supposed to be allegorical for real-world issues. I think it's applicable, but because it demonstrates several different principles and ideas that are relevant to the real world, illustrated by a specific fictional conjunction; the whole conjunction need not mirror any one real-world thing itself. The plight of the goblins as allegory for any real-world group's plight can't work if that group doesn't have a (self-appointed if not actual) leader pursuing a campaign of revenge meant to eventually solve their problems but compounding them in the present. Because that's where most of the emphasis is in the comic, on that. Redcloak is through-and-through a villain, not just Evil, but a villain, and the comic has done a lovely job showing that. And the goblins and their plight have been shown mostly in relationship to Redcloak. If we're supposed to take that as an allegory for a real-world group, it needs to be one with its own singular villain, and I don't think that's what Rich is intending.

So I could see someone (incorrectly, mind) taking the new emphasis in-comic on these issues as the start of a really poor turn towards shoehorning in an issue that wasn't there before just to make a political point, if you see the applicability start to get spelled out and think it's supposed to be a whole allegory, which goes on to have Redcloak white-washed and forgiven. And I think that's probably part of the knee-jerk reaction, you know, in addition to all the bad faith stuff I'm sure is there too.

Part of the issues is stuff that touches more directly on the issues is in supplementary material that you need to purchase which, while I'm sure is good quality, does feel removed by what's going on from the main story.

Although, there's also been a lot of question of said supplementary material like "maybe it was right, or at least understandable, for the Sapphire Guard to slaughter Redcloak's entire village including children", but that goes back to the "I just don't like these kind of messages" thing I mentioned.

Yeah, the moral message is strengthened a lot by reading Start of Darkness, I believe that On the Origins also has some similar stuff involving orcs.

That's so true. Without Start of Darkness, a lot of things aren't fleshed out.

I've also heard the O'Chul sidestory (I don't remember exactly what it's called) is pretty good about fleshing things out too, but I haven't actually read it myself.

"How the Paladin Got His Scar." And yes, it's great. Great for O-Chul's character, great for showing how Knight Templar paladins can be run without immediately losing all their powers, and great for showing some of the institutional racism on both sides of the fence.

I'm not sure I agree that D&D has learned the lessons the comic is trying to teach. <.< My friends and I rolled up a campaign recently, I wanted to play a tiefling because they look so cool. As we were going through the Player Handbook, we were stunned at how frequently the "Super evil and sinister variant" subclasses were depicted as tieflings.

The tiefling entry in the race list is basically several paragraphs of, "They're not biologically compelled to do evil or anything, but everyone hates them because everyone knows they're all bad. You don't have to play them as bad, you can decide how that social pressure affects them, but everyone hates them because it's common knowledge that the whole race is scum."

Some guides use the phrase "goodly races" to describe elves, humans, dwarves, etc., conspicuously leaving out some player races such as dragonborn or tiefling. "Goodly races" is pretty much the grossest possible terminology you can use to gatekeep PC races.

Our group pretty much agreed that Xanathar wrote all the books, that he's a racist prick, and that we want to confront him about it in the campaign. Rolling up a tiefling in 5e really made me feel a bit of where Redcloak's bitterness is coming from. I believe the lessons Rich is trying to teach are entirely relevant to modern D&D.

Oh the lessons haven’t been learnt by the book writers as recently as the 5th edition books, but said books are both 7 years old and lag a bit behind the community (due to being written by people who are so attached to the obey that they’ve worked their way up the food chain at Wizards).

The lesson Rich is trying to teach is relevant and will remain so for years to come, but he’s been slowly winning this argument bit by bit over the years. So people who’ve only played with people already convinced by Rich 10 years ago are going to find the entire conversation a bit odd.

Edited by Silasw on May 1st 2021 at 1:05:12 PM

I think 5E Tieflings aren't actually supposed to all be evil, and the fact people in general all think they are is supposed to be confronting a false racist bias as a character premise. But it seems in 5E mostly people just play Tieflings because they look cool. (Even though 3.X Tieflings with variable appearances were a much cooler idea than the comparative cookie-cutter of today, especially since you could still look like any of the 4E/5E Tieflings with it, fight me.)

As someone who played a couple Tieflings in 3.5, back when they were literally descended (however indirectly) from fiends, since I think it's supposed to be about some weird ritual or something now, and made a point of analyzing how that sort of prejudice impacted them growing up... I think I was the audience for that presented character beat, honestly.

(Though the 5E PHB also just kinda outright tells you that if it weren't for Drizzt there would be no chance for a good drow to be accepted on the surface, which, RIP me and my non-Forgotten Realms drow character concepts apparently, but also doesn't seem to have been a great move in light of the Drizzt clone thing, to point anyone interested in playing a drow at that one in particular. So I recognize they're not entirely on top of the ball, is what I'm saying.)

Edited by RaichuKFM on May 1st 2021 at 8:41:34 AM

I think they’ve actually announced changes to the Drow background due to recent backlash over their racial stereotyping. I believe three also looking at either doing away with racial stat boosts or making the entire system much more modular (I wonder if they’d split backgrounds into “cultural background” and “personal background”).

Maybe it's just my own experience with the threads I've seen, personally, but this thread is one of the most peaceful and content threads I've seen on this site. Now, I wouldn't say it's lazy or indolent, I do see plenty of arguments and discussion around here and I like that but, like, 99% of those arguments are with each other rather then the writer, if you get my drift.

It's...a little surprising, honestly. I have no major problems with the comic so far.

This does seem to be a common interpretation for some reason. Some people seem to dislike the idea that fighters/soldiers in a battle/war should think about why their opponents are fighting or any ethical or moral issues that might be involved.

I'll point out that the Rich has had this discussion earlier in the comic than you might think (and not just about goblins), which this comic being relevant.

Anyone who's interpreting it as "Roy didn't surrender and then talk things out" has an axe to grind. That's a willful strawman. This literal same comic that introduced "Roy never talked to the goblins about their motives" explicitly pointed out that Roy has no problem interrogating people in the middle of the fight.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 1st 2021 at 6:00:59 AM

I mean, the GITP forums also had backlash against 1) the idea that Familicide was an evil act (that was a while ago, granted), 2) a couple of lines with calling out previous sexist tropes Rich had used (in a comic that breaks the fourth wall all the freaking time), and 3) a one-line mention indicating a character was lesbian.

So it’s hard for me not to think politics is playing some role in the controversy on the GITP forums about Rich making it clear that oppression of goblinoids is a genuine problem the heroes should care about. Even though that’s already been clear for a while (ever since the purple quiddity reveal).

Kind of makes me want to facepalm, but it's more a case of resigned cynicism.

I found the Bandana situation extra amusing because it was actually a case of Rich backtracking on a previous statement he’d made. Years before he said he wouldn’t write a gay character because he felt that as a strait person he didn’t have enough knowledge to do it in a non-offensive way.

I’m not sure if he just realised he was overthinking it, did learning online or ended up with an IRL friend who educated him.

You can also compare the total lack of backlash when Rich did other diversity inclusions, like making Hinjo red-green colourblind.

As someone who is red-green colorblind, I really don't think that counts as diversity.